Bleeder
Denmark 1999
Reviewed by Chris Darke
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Copenhagen, the present. Video-store worker Lenny is visited by his friend Leo who announces his girlfriend Louise is expecting a child. When Leo returns home, Louise's brother Louis, a smalltime gangster, insults him. Lenny is in love with fast-food worker Lea and tries unsuccessfully to chat her up. Planning to spend the evening watching videos, Lenny, his boss Kitjo, Leo and Louis stop in a grocery store run by a couple of Muslims whom Louis racially abuses. Later, Lenny asks Lea out to a movie but eventually stands her up. Leo shows Lenny a gun he's bought. Louise meets Mika, a young mother with two children, and invites them back to the flat. Their presence makes Leo feel awkward and he hits Louise after they leave.
During a video-watching session at Kitjo's house, Leo draws a gun on Louis - who threatened him earlier - and shoots, but it is loaded only with blanks. Later, Leo and Louise have a violent argument, and he kicks her in the stomach. Louis beats Leo unconscious and injects him with HIV-contaminated blood. Leo calls Louise who tells him she's lost the baby; they agree they still love each other. Leo tracks Louis down, shoots him and then himself. Some time later, Lenny visits the graves alone. He finds Lea and arranges another date.
Review
In an age when flip irony and pastiche are the defining ingredients of the crime movie, Danish director Nikolas Refn demonstrated with his debut film Pusher that it's still possible to make a gangster film with sympathetic, full-blooded characters and emotional bite. So it's pleasing to report that Bleeder - the second in a proposed trilogy dealing with underclass criminals living in deprived areas of Copenhagen - is a further development along these lines. Where Refn's debut locked the viewer tightly in the point of view and predicaments of its lead protagonist, Bleeder casts its narrative net wider, hauling in a broader selection of characters.
What sets Refn apart from other tyro directors essaying the crime movie is an ability to create characters who are true to the genre's demands but also grounded in a recognisable social reality. Petty criminals, impoverished parents-to-be, the uncertain and culturally disenfranchised Leo, Louise, Louis and Lenny are all authentic urban creations. Moreover, these rooted, complex characters are a far cry from the wisecracking self-aware ciphers who strolled through such recent British Tarantino rip-offs as Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and Fast Food.
The archetypal video-store geek, Lenny absorbs the kind of violent schlock which Lock, Stock director Guy Ritchie and others have paid uncritical homage to in their films. But Refn doesn't patronise Lenny. Instead he's offset against the willowy object of his desire, Lea, a voracious reader who prefers vastly different fare from the hardcore action flicks Lenny watches with his mates. In one sequence Lea visits a second-hand bookstore, with its dusty stacks and an aged bibliophile tending his warren of writing. The mise en scène here underlines her part in an older, endangered world of cultural values. The linking of bookishness with femininity is curiously old-fashioned, evoking the kind of romanticism one associates more with the films of Wim Wenders, Jean-Luc Godard and Krzysztof Kieslowski.
Alongside this cultural referencing, the film demonstrates how petty crime is increasingly knitted into many socially marginalised lives. Refn's portrait of the criminal economy has a melancholy tinge to it. His men are largely losers, locked into a world of posturing machismo. Without words to articulate the longing that boils beneath the hardman carapace they can only explode into violence.
So, is Bleeder simply Pusher with girls? On one level, yes, and it's all the better for it. But given the humanity shown to its characters, the insistence on linking criminal and cultural lives, and the locked-in, combustible emotional feel, the film combines formal control with thematic ambition. All this further underscores that Refn is shaping up into an intriguing director.
Credits
- Director
- Nikolas Winding Refn
- Producers
- Nikolas Winding Refn
- Henrik Danstrup
- Thomas Falck
- Screenplay
- Nikolas Winding Refn
- Director of Photography
- Morten Sÿborg
- Editor
- Anne Østerud
- Production Designer
- Peter de Neergaard
- Music
- Peter Peter
- ©Kamikaze ApS
- Production Companies
- AKamikaze production in association with Scanbox Denmark, TV2 Denmark, Zentropa Entertainment and
- TempoMedia
- Line Producer/
- Production Manager
- Christel C.D. Hansen
- Unit Production Manager
- Mette Hesthaven
- Post-production Supervisor/Co-ordinator
- Tove Jystrup
- Assistant Director
- Mette Hesthaven
- Script Supervisor
- Sedsel Andersen
- Script Adviser
- Nicolaj Scherfig
- B Camera
- Ian N. Tomkins
- Steadicam Operators
- Flemming Laybourn
- 2nd Unit:
- Dick Ying
- Inferno
- Thomas Byg
- Sonne A/S
- Special Effects
- Lars Kolding Andersen
- Hummer Højmark
- Graphics
- Jabali Ravn
- Storyboard Artist
- Louise Trampedach
- Costume Designer
- Loa Miller
- Make-up
- Louise Bruun
- 2nd Unit:
- Trine Cordes
- Special Make-up Effects
- Louise Bruun
- Title Design
- Jabali Ravn
- Main/End Titles
- Trick-Film
- Jan-Erik Sandberg
- Soundtrack
- "Mit lille reservat" performed by C.V. Jørgensen; "Love" performed by M.S. Mongstad; "Babies Ablaze" performed by Torben Lendager, Peter Peter; "Final Solution", "Ringside of My Soul" performed by Bleeder; "In Essence" performed by Lovebites; "Nineteen" performed by 9teen; "Good Evening Mr. Whack" performed by Jesper Binzer; "Dommedag nu" performed by Den Gale Pose; "Stone Cold Dead" performed by Lulu; "Attack of the Honey Bees" performed by Düreforsög, Goodiepal; "Sick Science" performed by Peter Kyed; "Forever Together" performed by Walkers; "Love" performed by Velour de Ville
- Sound Design/Sound Recordist
- Svenn Jakobsen
- B Sound Recordists
- Mick Råschou
- Post-production:
- Mick Råschou
- Jim Skau Andersen
- Re-recording Mixers
- Kristian Eidnes Andersen
- Svenn Jakobsen
- Foley
- Julien Naudin
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Hit & Run
- Stig Günther
- Cast
- Kim Bodnia
- Leo
- Mads Mikkelsen
- Lenny
- Rikke Louise Andersson
- Louise, Leo's girlfriend
- Liv Corfixen
- Lea
- Levino Jensen
- Louis, Louise's brother
- Zlatko Buric
- Kitjo
- Claus Flüggare
- Joe
- Ole Abildgaard
- video shop customer
- Gordana Radosavljevic
- Mika
- Marko Zecewic
- Marko
- Dusan Zecewic
- Dusan
- John Barimani
- kiosk owner
- Ramadan Huseini
- friend in kiosk
- Karsten Schrøder
- Røde
- Svend Erik Eskeland Larsen
- Svend
- Troels Richter Knudsen
- Troels
- Søren Vestergaard
- Søren
- Ivan Jovanicic
- Ivan
- Danny Mortensen
- Danny
- Sebastian Sandbeck
- Seb
- Leif Norreballe
- wretched man
- Leif Norreballe
- antiquarian bookshop manager
- Charlotte Fuchs
- girl in grillbar
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- Metrodome Distribution Ltd
- 8,771 feet
- 97 minutes 28 seconds
- Dolby SRD
- In Colour
- Super 35 [2.35:1]
- Subtitles